Replies: 3 Comments

Posted by: Publicus On Friday, April 8th

Things are not getting a little better. The obligations Buish has undertaken are nothing but down-payments on open-ended and intractable expenditures, Medicare and the Middle East are already committed. The proposed borrowing for Social Security will be unprecedented if it actually succeeds.

Bush is a classic dot.com CEO: he makes the quarterly numbers look great, even if it takes blatant falsification, and the long term numbers a train wreck.

Why does a good conservative like you even care what the polls say?

Posted by: Nathan Smith On Thursday, April 7th

Well, some of your points are well-taken. The Bush Administration has been spending way too much. But that has been true for a long time, and now things are getting (a little) better. The latest budget was a bit more conservative. As for the Medicare entitlement, I'll agree that it was a bad idea, but it doesn't seem to have driven his approval ratings down at the time.

I hope you're right that Bush is unpopular because of the deficit. And that's actually plausible: in the most recent election, Americans were offered no deficit-reduction candidate, since Kerry matched his tax-hiking proposals with spending-hike proposals. So maybe voters still picked him over Kerry, but are getting gradually disillusioned. If voters just hate deficits, that's good news for the incentives of present and future politicians with respect to fiscal discipline.

But that's not how I read the evidence.

Posted by: Publicus On Thursday, April 7th

Reasoning like this can make you walk right off a cliff, Nathan,

Following your logic, you're one of the diminishing enlightened minority who sees things as they are, while anyone who disagrees is ipso facto foolish and incapable of holding an honest opinion.

Bush's approval rating is dropping because he is failing the conservatives by borrowing and spending like the worst kind of liberal; he is failing the conservatives by supporting a government that intrudes more readily than ever into the personal and private lives of families and individuals; because he is fearmongering on Social Security instead of delivering a solution,

Kindly explain how you can say that Bush is "America's conscience" and that "We ought to save and invest for our own retirements instead of burdening future generations," while Bush created an entitlement program bigger than the SS crisis he says is so serious, along with permanent tax breaks and an historic deficit that benefits only his generation and burdens future generations at a record level.